Cookware · Hearths
Tacho
A wide copper or tin pot: sweets, seafood, and the Portuguese word for the pot you never lend.
The journey
Tacho is how Portuguese kitchens say the pot that does the day's work — wide, often copper, used for doce de ovos as readily as for a stew. In the north it is the confectioner's hearth. On the coast it is the pot a cataplana sometimes sits beside.
A saucepan is taller. A tacho is a skillet that knows it is a pot.
In the kitchen
Keep the flame moderate on copper. Sweets want constant stirring. Seafood wants a lid and a short time.
The Portuguese volume names this pot when the recipe is as much about the vessel as the food.